LAST ISSUE FEATURED a Lithuanian ska-report by our overseas correspondent extraordinaire - Mr.Domas, lead-vocalist in Dr. Green. This time around we are taking one step further East, to the land formerly known as the Soviet Union. More exact we set the compass to St. Petersbourg, formerly known as Leningrad, home to Russia's only active ska-band: Spitfire.

The band consists of six people and play a type of ska similar to american bands like Less Than Jake and MU 330.

One Step Beyond caught them on their Scandinavian tour in late November right before their gig in Gothenbourg. The whole band were very friendly and open, but the drummer Dennis and singer/guitarist Kostya were the ones who answered most of the questions. I started out by asking about their experiences in Sweden.

- Sweden has been pretty cool actually, but we have only made three gigs so far. We liked the gig in Stockholm at Kafe 44 but we did not have a good day for it. We played on Tuesday. But actually people came there anyway. They saw the band for the first time so you can't expect too much.

A reason for people's lack of knowledge of the band is the very poor distribution that ska gets here in Sweden. However, the band does have distribution here through Seadog records, (who by the way contributed material for the compilation cassette that came with the first issue of OSB). The label which their debut album "Night Hunting" was released on though is the German label PoikPie.

- We had some friends in Germany who had some friends from Pork Pie and that's how we met. A friend of ours called Alex made a compilation called The United Colours of Ska vol.2, and he asked us if we wanted to be on it. It sells pretty good in Germany. The band started out as a rockabilly band, but has been playing ska since 1994. We came up with this idea to play with Mr. Umbrella and Mr. Bazooka (the trumpet and trombone player), so we joined another project which played swinging jazz and jive from 40's and 50's and those guys played there. We played together for a while and then we made an offbeat song with Spitfire, and we asked them to play and they agreed. Finally it was pretty good so we decided to carry on.

I asked further about their musical influences and Dennis answered straight away that his biggest influence was Fishbone.:

- Actually I've always been into ska and punk. We've always listened to it. It came so suddenly. We were thinking: what is Spitfire going to play? I got into ska because I was listening to too much Rockabilly music (laughs). My first CDs were the Specials and Madness.

What about the choice to play ska-core?

-I think it's a funny thing because we hadn't heard a lot of modem bands before we started to play. We recognised them first after we had written a couple of songs. First we thought that we had discovered something but then we realised that it already had existed for ten years (laughs).

Because of communist rule and the narrowmindness of many russian politicians, the Russian people have not experienced many foreign bands playing there. I asked the band which bands they would most want to come and play in Russia. Straight away Dennis answered that he wanted to see Fishbone come and play there, and then burst out into laughter (!).

- Well Fishbone is actually a kind of "stadium" band. If I wanted to make people know what ska music really is I would have brought Selector or Toasters. Or the Skatalites.

Being that Russia is a rather unusual breeding ground for skabands, I was curious to know what the Russian ska-scene was like. I had previously heard a demo-tape with a band which was rumoured to have played during communist rule.

- You mean Strange Games. They only play sometimes. They were kind of Madness-influenced. They have played since the early eighties.

What about the Russian skacrowd?

- We actually don't have a real ska audience in Russia. Everybody likes ska but we don't have that many bands playing.

So the audience is not the typical rudeboy, skinhead type?

- No, but for me it doesn't matter. I don't care, I like them all as long as they come to our shows. There aren't that many rudeboys, and Russian skinheads are more Nazis. There are some guys that are coming up now and are trying to search for the original skinhead movement. Maybe sooner or later some will emerge.

Can you get ska records in Russia?

You can get a lot of it but it comes on CDs. They also make bootleg tapes of lots of underground shows, so you can get all kinds of music. You can get it from regular stores, but only on CD, not on vinyl, which is too bad. I felt that our time was running out so I asked what their future plans would be:

I think we're going to drink this box of beer (laughs). We're looking forward to going to the Hultsfred festival. I was there this summer with my friends from Seadog records. I think it's a good festival with lots of good bands playing there, so we're going to try and play a concert there next year. Tomorrow we're going to play with Everfresh. It's a band from Linkoping. They're kind of a Californian, Epitaph punk band. And in Germany we are going to play with a German punk band and The Toasters. It's funny because we are right in the middle, we don't play pure punk and we don't play pure ska. We are going to play more concerts over Europe and start recording a new album because we actually have enough material for a new record.We will try to play festivals and tour more in Scandinavia.The situation now is more "opening". People now are more open-minded in Russia, but there arc not so many bands there that have played in Europe. If we tour in Europe maybe we can bring over some experience to Russia. Not every band knows how to do it. I think it's a big experience not only for us, but also for other bands if they come and see how big the bands are here, how good they are, and what you have to do to tour Europe.

Lastly I wanted them to comment on what they considered themselves to be the most: ska or punk?

- Watch the concert and then you decide. I think it's hard to say if it's more this or that. We don't like it to be just one way.

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